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The Workplace: Be productive - Call in sick

NEW YORK — Matt Nehmer is proud of himself. He even ventures a comparison to the likes of the baseball players Cal Ripken and Lou Gehrig and the football player Brett Favre. What is he so proud of? He has not taken a sick day since 1993.

"There have been days where I felt awful and still dragged myself in," Nehmer said of his job as director of communications for the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. "I was definitely ill enough to stay home, but I didn't want to."

Over at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, Karrie Heartlein, director of public relations, hides out in her office - not from Nehmer, because they do not work together or even know each other, but from those like him, who come to work and spread germs. She spent a week in bed with the flu last year, and does not want to catch something like that again. So she keeps antibacterial wipes in her desk and disinfects the conference table before and after meetings. "Some folks laugh at me," she said, "but I'd rather take the joke" than get sick.

It is fitting that both Nehmer and Heartlein work at colleges, because all this starts in preschool - when youngsters are first sent out into the world to bring home germs. It continues into grade school and beyond, with those awards for perfect attendance, and the message that there is honor in dragging yourself in, no matter what.

You would think we would leave such things behind by the time we reach the workplace, but the grown-up world proves as infected and inculcated as any classroom. Many people are at their desks sniffling and hacking this time of year - people who should be home, but who are proud, or at least resigned, to be playing hurt.

We all do it. According to a recent survey by ComPsych, a Chicago company that provides employee assistance programs, 77 percent of workers say they come to work sick. We do it so often that experts have given it a name - presenteeism, as in the opposite of absenteeism, describing time and productivity lost when employees are physically at work but not feeling well enough to be productive.

Most say their workload does not allow time to be absent, or they fear their job would be in jeopardy if they did not come to work. A substantial percentage also say they save their sick days to use when their children are sick.

Lynda Ford, president of the Ford Group, a human resources consulting company in Rome, New York, and author of "Transform Your Workplace," says these reasons are symptoms of a work environment that is sick itself.

"Sometimes people show up sick because they are self-absorbed workaholics who don't consider that they are infecting everyone around them," she said. But more often, "the organizational culture frowns on people taking time off when they are sick and in fact puts pressure on them to show up."

Wendy Hart Beckman used to work with a boss to whom being present was all-important. "He didn't care if you were productive while you were there," she said. "He just cared that you were there."

One memorable morning, she said, a colleague came in "looking pale, sweaty and kind of glassy-eyed" - but when his co-workers urged him to go home, he refused. Shortly after he arrived, he threw up all over a secretary's desk, in the middle of the open office. Eventually everyone had to be sent home, because of the lingering smell.

The manager's "obsession with not missing work resulted in missing far more hours when about eight people have to leave," said Beckman, who has since switched jobs and now works at the University of Cincinnati as a public information officer.

Beckman tries to stay home when she is sick, but says she feels guilty whenever she does. This, too, harks back to grade school, she suspects.

Heartlein has had her share of that guilt. In her crusade against germs, she regularly sends employees home and says that most apologize as they leave.

Nehmer wants to make it clear that he comes to work not because he feels pressured to do so, but because he is proud of his personal streak and is determined to keep it going. He is careful to wash his hands often when he is sick, he said, and not to breathe on anyone.

Heartlein said that was not enough. Yet when we spoke, she acknowledged that she was getting a cold. And that she was at work. "It's just at the 'tickle in the throat' stage," she said, a touch defensively. "When I start sneezing and coughing I really will go home."